


moonstruck

by zeitgeistofnow



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Character Study, Drabble, F/F, Late Night Conversations, Late Night Writing, Light Angst, Post-Canon, also, au where yue doesn't become the moon also, i have... thoughts about these girls, kinda?? idk lol, uhh poetic nonsense also
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:55:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25759219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeitgeistofnow/pseuds/zeitgeistofnow
Summary: moonstruck,her mother used to say when she would catch yue staring up at the sky,captured by the spirits, my little girl, don’t stare too long or you’ll never be able to look away.it’s how yue feels when she looks at suki sometimes, like if she gazes too long she’ll be stuck, like if she gets too close she’ll burn up into steam and ashes.
Relationships: Suki/Yue (Avatar)
Comments: 21
Kudos: 100





	moonstruck

“Your hair is so soft,” Suki hums, fingers carding through silvery strands. Yue isn’t facing her, so all she can see is a distant reflection of both of them in a nearby pond- the rippling reflection of the moon, first, centered and holy, then below it both of them sitting on the roof of Suki’s home. 

Yue’s hair glows vaguely in the pond’s mirror of her, refraction of reflected light off pale hair that is just reflected light from the sun bouncing off the moon and into their eyes. Suki shines beside her, warm hair and gold jewelry catching the moonlight and insisting its cool light become warm. 

_ Moonstruck _ , her mother used to say when she would catch Yue staring,  _ captured by the spirits, my little girl, don’t stare too long or you’ll never be able to look away.  _ It’s how Yue feels when she looks at Suki sometimes, like if she gazes too long she’ll be stuck, like if she gets too close she’ll burn up into steam and ashes.

“Only because of the moon’s blessing,” Yue says, repeating something she’s heard implied in a thousand conversations. 

Suki’s hands still and detangle themselves from Yue’s hair, finding their places around her waist. The Kyoshi warrior tucks her head into the crook of Yue’s shoulder and when she talks Yue can feel it against her collarbone. “Your voice is beautiful too,” she says, and Yue laughs. “There are so many beautiful things about you that are from you, not from the moon. I love your nose and your laugh, for a start, and the mole you have a few inches below your ear.” As if to emphasize her point, Suki turns her head slightly to press a light kiss to the dot of a mole on Yue’s neck. “You’re divine even without the moon’s blessing.”

“Hmph,” Yue titters lightly, more a self-conscious acknowledgement of what Suki’s saying than anything else.  _ Laughter like bells, _ Sokka calls Yue’s laugh. So much of what Yue knows about herself are what other people tell her. 

She wonders what she would know if she were alone- would she know the moon? Would she know her laugh like bells, her eyes like the ocean? How would she make the comparisons without something to compare them too? How would she know her limits without measuring them against the limits of others? Even Tui, paragon of impartialness, pushed and pulled at the tides in an everlasting fight with earth. Yui can imagine it- an eternal empty cycle, warring because there’s nothing left to do. She’s sure the tug of war over the tides started for good enough reason- she’s sure her honor is keeping her upright, that her responsibilities are holding her up as much as they weigh on her shoulders.

Suki watches Yue’s eyes go slightly glossy, fuzzy at the edges and soft at the moon.  _ Moonstruck,  _ Suki’s mother used to say,  _ just wait and someday you’ll find someone to look at you the way you look at Tui.  _

Suki never did, but that’s not for lack of love- there’s just a way that she looks at the moon that she doesn’t think could be properly replicated. Awe and understanding wrapped up in the vastness of the space between them- something so epically untouchable that Suki can’t imagine being close enough to touch. She doesn’t think anyone could look at her like that and she can’t imagine it being a nice way to be looked at- she wants to be close to people, to have and to hold and to run her fingers through their hair.

“What time are you leaving tomorrow?” she asks Yue, half sad to tear the princess away from the moon. 

Yue blinks slowly, an expression Suki can only see from their reflections in the pool. Their mirrors shimmer, Suki cast in vague shadows, the implication of a girl, and Yue in blues and silvers, even her eyelashes defined as something worth reflecting. “Hm? Oh, early-early. I really should be getting to bed soon.”

“Why can’t you stay?” Suki twists her fingers between the scarf tied around Yue’s waist, the fine fabric slipping between her fingers like tiny fish in the pond beneath them. “You’ve only been here a few days. I thought you were on vacation.”

Yue leans back into Suki, feather-light like she’s trying not to put any weight on the other girl. She’s warm and smells like dew in the early morning, like rain droplets on the petals of flowers. “I’m never on vacation,” Yue says softly, “I’m just taking a moment to breathe and that’s all it is. A moment. We have a world to rebuild and I have the power to shape it. There’s no time to do anything else. I have a responsibility-” she hesitates. Suki raises one of her hands to twirl a strand of Yue’s hair. It practically glows in the dark, so different from the girl who does her best work in quiet shadows. 

“After?” she whispers, “will you come home with me?”

Silence. Suki can almost hear what she’s thinking, has thought the exact same things a few dozen times herself. Responsibilities pile up and they never really leave- someday Yue will be the Chief, more power on her shoulders. Someday Yue will tie herself to her tribe permanently, the same way Suki will to the Kyoshi Warriors. The Northern Water Tribe is only a few days from Kyoshi Island but it feels as far away as the moon when there are people at home who need you.

And in the end, that’s it. The world is a great big place and it needs them more than they need each other. They will always love their people more than they love anyone else and maybe that means they won’t create a home with anyone else, even if they found someone to look at them like the moon. Even if Suki found someone who didn’t look at her like a shadow.

“Yes,” Yue says finally, and they both know it’s something of a lie. “We’ll come home to each other every night and it won’t be a moment to breathe, it’ll be a lifetime of time to recover.”

“That sounds nice,” Suki says. 

**Author's Note:**

> \- i love these girls.. i have many thoughts about them  
> \- first of all!! v interested abt how water is the element of change and fluidity even while the nwt is very entrenched in tradition etc etc also frozen water as opposed to liquid water. this thought isn't fully articulated and i'm too tired to figure it out but.. :strokes goatee: very interesting  
> \- also okok this is actually abt my writing not just atla but suki saying no one looks at her the way she looks at the moon but yue looks at her the way YUE looks at the moon!! it's about loving the way we love, not the way our partners love and how sometimes that's a good thing and sometimes that's something that can cause problems in our relationships. it's ALSO about how even if yue feels like she's formed by other ppl's perceptions of her she still loves as herself, no one else.  
> \- yue perceiving herself as simply reflecting the light of her position (princess) and the people around her (like the moon glows because of the light of the sun) and suki perceiving herself as just a shadow to the light of the people around her but both of them seeing the other glowing in their own right.. girls supporting girls but actually just being in love  
> \- i think the great tragedy of atla is that their cultures mean so much to each and every one of them and their cultures r inherently geographically far apart?? like idk what they do after atla ends (don't tell me what happens in the comics/lok i'm too pretty) but it makes me sad that they can't be together without leaving a part of themselves behind. the only person i'm cool with leaving where he grew up is zuko but for some reason hes like the only one who doesn't?? anyway this is a rant for another time. (specifically for the au i have where zuko becomes a amabassador to the swt instead of becoming fire lord). anyway i think the role culture plays in atla is overlooked but v cool  
> \- i wrote this in like an hour because i just love them a lot so it has way too many concepts for the word count  
> \- as always, you can find me on tumblr [@lazypigeon](https://lazypigeon.tumblr.com/). shoot me an ask abt literally anything i dream of being one of those tumblr ppl who gets weird yet insightful anons


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